Snowden lashes out at US government for keeping drone program secret

The newly published documents exposed previously secret details of the U.S. government’s secretive drone war, including new information that raises serious concerns about the accuracy and effectiveness of drone strikes in Afghanistan, Iraq and other countries.

The Intercept and the Huffington Post co-published parts of the documents on Thursday in “The Drone Papers.”

Shortly after their release, Snowden weighed in on Twitter: “When we look back on today, we will find the most important national security story of the year.”

On Friday, Snowden asked why the U.S. government has withheld so much information about the drone program.

Ben Wizner, Snowden’s lawyer and director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy and Technology Project, echoed those sentiments.

The Intercept’s material detailed a “kill chain” under the drone policy.

“This outrageous explosion of watch-listing — of monitoring people and racking and stacking them on lists, assigning them numbers, assigning them ‘baseball cards,’ assigning them death sentences without notice, on a worldwide battlefield — it was, from the very first instance, wrong,” the anonymous source told The Intercept.

The drone program has come under increased scrutiny in recent years. A 2013 report by rights group Amnesty International that documented collateral deaths from the program called it “potentially unlawful,” and comedian John Oliver dedicated an episode of his popular HBO program Last Week Tonight to the controversy and secrecy surrounding the Unites States’ use of drones to fight the war on terror.

Snowden expressed hopes on Friday that the new leaks will encourage more government insiders to step forward and talk to the media when they see potential abuses of power.

“Whistleblowers are elected by circumstance. It's not about who you are. It's not about what your credentials are,” Snowden said. “It's about what you see, and ultimately the choice to do something about it.”